UNDP campaign to stop the spread of AIDS

In the region Belize is among the countries with the highest cases of AIDS. To bring the numbers down, a mass media campaign was launched today targeting youths to make positive choices in respect of their sexual reproductive health. The campaign is being organized by the National committee for families and children and the United Nations Development Program. News Five Isani Cayetano has this report.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Choose & Use, Wait & No Worry, the mantras of two newly launched mass media campaigns, aim at engaging young men and women in raising awareness for behavioral and social change. Under the sixth item on the list of Millennium Development Goals, an effort is being made to stop and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. The campaigns are part of the education process.

Martin Cuellar

Dr. Martin Cuellar, Executive Director, National AIDS Commission

“The first campaign is targeting one particular group that we identify as being particularly vulnerable and that is young girls, who are pre-sexual activity, between eleven and thirteen years of age. The other group is completely separate and that campaign is also separate. That second campaign is targeting young people who are more adult, those between eighteen and above and in that campaign we are promoting the idea of reducing the number of sexual partners and consistent use of condoms. So they are indeed two different messages and they are targeting two different groups within the Belizean population.”

Speaking to a gathering of students from across the country this morning was Jay Coombs, program analyst for the United Nations Development Program.

Jay Coombs

Jay Coombs, Program Analyst, United Nations Development Program

“This communication campaign launch is part of a larger project entitled, “Accelerating the pace, reaching marginalized and vulnerable populations with critical services.” This project is being implemented by all the partners you hear, the Government of Belize, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with funding from the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. It is a grant under Round Nine Funding of the Global Fund. This communication campaign is part of a wider strategy and the reason I mentioned all the other organizations that are involved is simply to say they are all a part of ensuring that young people are reached and their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS is reduced.”

The idea, says Dr. Martin Cuellar of the National AIDS Commission, is to go beyond the mass media blitz.

Dr. Martin Cuellar

“This campaign is a start of what we’re considering a year of prevention focus in 2013. So there will be other campaigns developed in the next couple of months and there will be other initiatives being implemented by our partner agencies that will compliment and support the impact of these messages that we are launching today. So the idea is that they will not stand alone and that’s where we want to do other initiatives, not just mass media campaigns but other initiatives that include parenting lessons, parenting sessions, for example those being done through our partners at the Ministry of Education.”

Today’s launch was a collaborative effort between the National Committee for Families and Children and the United Nations Development Program. Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.

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9 Responses for “UNDP campaign to stop the spread of AIDS”

This pm and gov should come out and tell the truth aids is spreading at an alarming rate in the country now in the next 3 years half of all the population will be infected with aids so if this gov doesn’t kill us by murder they will let all belizeans die from aids.

The sad part of this whole aids situation are the women whose husbands have other women outside of their marriages and, bring this awful thing home to them. It is time to do safe sex education via radio, TV and print. Bring sex education to the schools and show videos so the kids can see the result of this disease.

Rod your so ridiculous….So if X person goes and fornicates himself all over the place, thats the GOB’s fault? What? AIDS is a punishment for living a promiscuous life. And yes, sometimes the innocent suffer under it too. Bottom line is, bad choices produce bad fruit, and at times bear bad fruit for the rest of a persons life..Rod, it is not the GOB’s fault if your own dog bites your leg off!

No way @Al…THat is gonna make it worse!!!!!!!! Why schools? WHy why why???? These things are for the parents to teach their children…Public education on this will trigger this kind of behaviour..Man this world is so reverse and sick..to the bone..Its corruption to the max

rod, find something else better to do. what does the spreading of aids have to do with the government? People make their own choices and who makes the wrong choice just suffers the consequence. For every issue that arises here, you put the blame on GOB. It is not the government’s fault that people go and fornicate themselves. GOB cannot control what each individual does. Find something else better to do than to post foolishness here.

Our churches need to work on a national campaign to promote morality among the children, “Just say no” for the girls. We have 2 related epidemics, AIDS and pregnant, unmarried children who have no hope of being able to afford the children the give birth to. So that dooms the baby into a life of poverty, horribly unfair to the child.

The issue isn’t about teaching preteens to perform sex right, but not to perform it at all until they are married.

I’d like to find a statistic as to what percentage of babies are born out of wedlock in Belize. That’s the source of many of our social, economic, and crime problems.

Churches need to do more than give sermons on Sunday, they need to run programs that help the community 7 days a week.

@Belizean, are u kidding me? There are so many parents in Belize that cannot talk about sex to their children, because all they know about it is how to do it. The children see men come and go. They have four siblings and all of them still are from different fathers and the man mama is living with is not the father of any of the children. tell me what can they teach their children.

Do you see how out of hand the sexual activity is in the country. Kids need to know that as their body change there will be certain feelings that will come, they need to know how to control those feelings. The lack of sexual knowledge is why young girls become victim to older men who take advantage of them sexually.

Sex education that is structured and is pointed towards human sexuality is educational, not designed to cause them to go out and give it away. Girls especially needs to understand their bodily changes and how to protect it from stepfathers and old men and young boys who take their innocence in the name of love and caring.